[Cialug] Dell picks Ubuntu

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 09:37 -0500, David Champion wrote:
> I can hear you. I'm right here. :p
> 
> While I agree that Mandriva would have been a good choice, Ubuntu 
> certainly has the momentum amongst the linux using public.
> 
>  From the article: "Regardless of this deal's origins, Canonical's staff 
> is pretty excited, seeing this as a validation not only for their own 
> distribution, but for desktop Linux as a whole."
> 
> So, Matthew, how excited are the staff?
> 
> -dc

Pretty excited, especially since:
a: we all knew a relationship with Dell was in the works, but
b: we didn't know what the relationship involved, and
c: we couldn't talk about it outside of the comany

I didn't even know there was a Dell announcement until yesterday, when I
found out because I was given instructions to post it on the website
today. On Friday I was given information that we would be making a big
announcement and to make sure the web caches could handle a heavy load.
I had no clue, but in hindsight, I should have realized since the
embargo date (the only info I had) was in our time zone.

I'm excited. Some of our engineers were at the Dell offices for a while
helping doing validation on systems. I guess its pretty insane the stuff
they have to consider (for example, how long it takes to image the drive
on the assembly line is a *big* deal).

The good news imho, is that people will have some desktop and laptop
computer models to choose from that they know will work with Linux.
They're obviously not paying for the Ubuntu license, so they're free to
install what ever distro they like with a reasonable assurance that its
possible for it to work.

What I'm curious about is Dell's ancillary revenues. The way I
understand (from stuff I've read on the web), Dell makes a good bit of
money from revenue by bundling additional products and trial versions of
software on the PCs. If you sign up for the AOL trial, they get an extra
$10 or something. That doesn't sound like much, but with margins on
hardware being so tight, it certainly adds to the bottom line.

So will this revenue-generating model carry over to Ubuntu equipped
Dells? Will we soon start seeing icons for Netzero and music services on
the desktop?

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode